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dkersten:
Got all of them stretched last weekend and got the first unit completed last night.

I started by stretching the fabric over a frame made from poplar (3/4" thick, 1 1/4" wide). Then I made a frame with Baltic birch (1/2") that has a French cleat recessed into the top (to hang it on the wall), and some corner cleats at the bottom to keep it square. The total thickness of the frame is 3 3/8" thick. The acoustic damping material is 2" thick (Owens Corning 703 3lb/ft^3 rigid fiberglass), so the cleats and the acoustic material took up 2.5" of that. The frames are 3/4", so that leaves about an eighth inch plus fabric depth. I wrapped the frame in a black cloth that is sort of like a felt or suede material (just cotton though, suede was 20 bucks per yard and I needed 8 yards). I added a 3/8" foam weather strip to the inside edge before stretching fabric over the frames, that closes the gap and makes the poster frame inset into it tightly. This way I can change out posters down the road if I want without even having to take the units off the walls. I have 5 more to go..

Oh, and here is the theater (front stage) with the speakers I built.. 2 18" subs, sealed, the center, left, and right use 8" midbass drivers with compression drivers and waveguides. I used solid cherry for the fronts of the speakers, finished naturally. The bodies I just painted with primer then flat black and shot satin lacquer over them.. the finish is super solid and takes half the time to apply and cure as satin or semi gloss black from a can and way stronger.. of course I used an hvlp gun to shoot the lacquer, but if I do another cab, this will be the finish I use..

It isn't arcade, but the process to build uses all the same skills as a cab. If anyone wants me to post a build thread I could do that..

BadMouth:
I like seeing custom built speakers. I tried starting a thread where people would post pics of their speaker builds, but nobody but me and Ond showed up. :)
You'd think with the similar skillsets it would be more common among BYOAC members, but not many seem interested.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,141777.msg1467301.html#msg1467301

wp34:
Well done dkersten. :applaud: Thanks for sharing.

Since you offered I wouldn't mind seeing some more details on the speaker build.

dkersten:
Yeah, for as many parallels as there are to arcade builds, I am surprised there isn't more people interested in this here. There is actually an arcade forum in the AVS forum sub menus, lol.

I started this project 4 weeks ago wanting to upgrade my sub.. I had a $500 budget and no desire to do DIY. I got talked into doing 2 18's with 6000 watts of power on the AVS forum and it just went all to hell from there, lol.

My first sub enclosures were end tables:

They came out great and sounded good too, but the location in the room was horrible with massive cancellation issues. Plus at 15 hz with thousands of watts of power, the glass would start bouncing pretty good and the lamps were jumping 2 inches off the glass.. couldn't have that, lol. I fiddled with adding mass to the tables in the form of pavers (added 85 lbs to the already 150 lb tables) and that helped a lot, but I still didn't like the sound. So I reconfigured my plans and went with the subs in front.

The speakers are all available as kits on diysoundgroup.com and are the result of a few years of engineering by a couple enthusiasts who turned it into a business. For a few hundred dollars you can build a speaker that performs like a $3000 speaker, and the best part is they have ~98db sensitivity, so they are crazy loud with moderate power (any mid level AV receiver) and with a couple hundred watts they simply blow you away while not being overly fatiguing. It's crazy, you can jack up to reference volume (which peaks out at ~122 db in my room during loud scenes) and it feels normal until you try to talk to others in the room and realize you have to shout just to be heard.

The problem is, you can have a $500 theater or a $50,000 theater and without the right room, they will sound roughly the same. So that is why I am doing all the acoustical treatments... my room has a crazy 25 db spike at 42 hz and voids at 23 hz in the main listening position, 80hz at the secondary listening position, and a slew of other issues all over. I was pumping 33hz at ~2500 watts through my subs (about 120 db in a ~1300 sq foot space) and 2 feet in front of the main listening position you could stand there and not hear a thing.. it was eerily quiet in that spot.. move 3 inches in any direction and it hits you like a train, but in that spot it was completely dead. So weird.. So I am trying to stop the standing waves and voids that are making my little room sound so bad.

I have it dialed in pretty good even without the treatments, and we watched Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse the other night.. it was SO AWESOME!.. My old theater was actually boomier with a single 12" ported 100 watt Infinity sub, but this new system is just smooth and clear and tons of impact and headroom.

BadMouth:

--- Quote from: dkersten on January 26, 2016, 11:56:03 am ---my room has a crazy 25 db spike at 42 hz
--- End quote ---

lol, mine is right at 40hz. The room is about 15x12 IIRC. You can walk the length of the room and it alternates from insane bass to anemic bass every two steps.
I just said the hell with it and placed everything including the couch in the perfect position without any regard to appearance or guest seating. Threw down shag carpet and heavy curtains. The listening position was in the best possible spot and I still needed like 28db of cut at 40hz on the parametric EQ.
It sounded spectacular in the end, but made the living room useless for anything other than watching movies with only one other person.
Placement really is 90% of it.

Since buying the house from the landlord and remodeling I gave up and went back to focusing on appearance and maximizing guest seating.
I went all the way down to 2.0 bookshelf speakers, but with the boost at 40hz it sounds like there is a sub hidden somewhere, although not a great one.
When I finish the place and get new furniture, I may go the tactile transducer route.

So everything from my original setup is going unused and could be used in a dedicated home theater in the basement, but with such a small house I hate to give up the space for what amounts to a second living room.

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